ANGER Archives - Mindful Happiness

April 4, 2015 By Admin

Practical Actions for Overcoming Anger

Overcoming the Hindrances of Ill-Will and Aversion

Although regular daily practice and sincerely following of The Eight-Fold Path in one’s life may be the best ways to overcome various hindrances, there may be some additional practical suggestions to consider on the path. We will begin our discussion with common human pain and suffering; we will end the post with skills for dealing more effectively with anger. When we experience suffering in conditions that include other people as causes, we may project our painful experience as anger against them. Blame is the great triangle of hopelessness; if we can blame another person for our suffering, we disavow any need to change our own behaviors (thoughts, words, and actions). Causes of pain lead to pain, but pain does not always need to lead to personal suffering.

Human Pain and Suffering:

We humans are here on earth for many reasons. However, no matter what container you place your experiences into, the experiences tend to fall into three general categories: neutrality/boredom, joy/happiness, and pain/suffering. The next time you experience serious pain and suffering, try talking TO it. If you like “self-talk” better as a description of this process that is fine. Here are some things you could say to yourself.

1) “Pain is inevitable, but suffering does not always have to follow.”

2) “Neither pain nor suffering are new to me. I have experienced them in the past, and I realize they are impermanent.”

3) “To better understand my pain and suffering I need to pay close attention to them. It is MY pain and suffering”

4) “Is it possible that I may be responsible for some of the suffering if not the pain?”

5) “Do I understand the causes of my pain and suffering? Do I understand that I need to treat it gently with love? It is part of me right now.”

6) ” I may need to learn better patience in dealing with my own pain and suffering. These conditions will pass in time.”

7) “What wise-mind skills can I use to prevent the prolongation of my suffering into secondary suffering?”

When Pain and Suffering Lead to Anger:

When we see other people as the causes of our pain and suffering, anger may follow. In making contact with your anger (in thoughts, words, sensations, emotions, and actions), it is wise to utilize vipassana methods to recognize the first conscious arisings of it. If you can connect with the earliest arising before it blooms into unhelpful thoughts, words or actions, you may be in a better position to alter this destructive emotion. See the suggestions noted below. These are practical things to practice every time you become angry. These approaches assume you have enough mindfulness abilities to use awareness with self-calming to counteract emotional dysregulation.

1) Immediately STOP the impulsivity of the anger. Curtail it in the first instance of recognizing it.

2) Loosen your jaw, and breathe deeply and calmly as you count your breaths up to twenty.

3) Work very hard to shift your thoughts to more wholesome or compassionate intentions.

4) Recognize impermanence and wait patiently until your impulsive anger has calmed.

5) Stop blaming other people for your emotional condition. Even if another person does something unkind to you, you are in charge of your emotional responses to their actions. Pain will exist in life, but suffering is not an absolute consequence from it.

6) Say a loving kindness sentence to yourself: may I be peaceful; may I be at ease; May I be safe. You may have to shift to: may she/he be peaceful; may she/he be at ease; may she/he be safe. If in a dyad, wishing good for both of you may help.

7) Focus on gratitude – note anything you possess gratitude for.

8) If appropriate, view the other person as interconnected with you. It may help to view them as one of your parents. If a parent is loving, would you want to harm her/him?

For more information refer to Gunaratana, B. H. (2009). Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English: An Introductory Guide to Deeper States of Meditation. Boston, MA.: Wisdom Publications, pp. 69-84.

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont

Author of Mindful Happiness

CLICK HERE to Order!

Vipassana Meditation – Emptiness One of the great insights from regular, long-term vipassana practice is the experience of emptiness. The actual knowing of it by the experience of it. This is not your typical conceptual emptiness of the West; it is not total void, negative beings, or nihilistic pit, or suffering in endlessness. It is […]

Advanced Buddhist Practices Abiding in Emptiness The various impediments (enemies) to abiding in emptiness are noted below. We have strong attachment to objects of mind and our sense door pleasures. We experience strong desire and cravings as our norms. We over-attach to forms of affection. We may become stuck in grief related to our experienced […]

Insights – Vipassana Mediation There will be future, more advanced vipassana meditations posted on the site. For now, however, we will end this series with a final post about the insights often experienced via vipassana meditation. We learn via experience about impermanence, suffering and its causes, no-self, emptiness and many other things – or, perhaps, […]

Secular Meditation and Addictions Treatment Today we have ample research evidence (NIH, NIDA, SAMHSA, etc.) that mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and mind training all have some effectiveness in improving addiction disorders. In recent meta-analyses the primary effect was through improved emotion regulations, whereas there was a more direct positive impact on chronic pain, depression, and anxiety. […]

“Ignorance” of Requirements Could End Your Clinical Career Recently various insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare fraud cases have been in the national headlines. Although these fraud cases grab headlines, the truth is that many clinically licensed helpers still do not understand clinical/legal documentation requirements. In Buddhism, “ignorance” gets in our way; we never approach true liberation […]

Loving Kindness Meditation – More Thoughts Some less experienced meditators complain about how easily the mind’s wandering thoughts distract them from paying attention and deepening concentration. This is a very common problem in meditation practice, and not always just for novices. Here is a solution for you to try. In Loving Kindness Meditation, you focus […]

More RESPECT Needed for People Being Served Recently, I read a post by William White, the well-known Recovery advocate. The post dealt with the troublesome area of language used to describe, refer to people suffering from various conditions – addictions being only one. While some may respond to his post by thinking it is simply […]

Trauma Informed Care – The Absolute Basics This post aims at providing a very basic introduction to Trauma Informed Care. Advanced versions of this information are available from the author. So what is Trauma Informed Care (hereafter TIC)? Below I have listed rationales of need and core characteristics of TIC in organizations. Why We Need […]

Liberation of the True Self Socrates is reported to have noted that “the secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old but on building the new.” In Buddhism there are clear relationships between “no-self” and the force of impermanence, that reality that ensures constant change and thus personal […]

Contemplative Practices – Affirmative Self-Inquiry Contemplation and affirmative self-inquiry may be helpful in improving your awareness of your better parts of self – your positive strengths and traits. Our self-critical mind often causes us to spend far too much time on critical, negative thinking about ourselves and about others. The practice below may be helpful […]

About Interoception and It’s Importance Interoception (some may also call it neuroception) is the conscious detection and perception of sensory signals in the body and on the skin. Most often these signals are processed as sensations. Sensation, as the foundation of emotional experience, is always there in our bodies; however, we are not always fully […]

Mindful Loving Can Improve Relationships The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), Pema Chodron, David Richo and many others have provided us with helpful advice about improving the quality of our significant relationships. The Dalai Lama in various writings reminds us that to have true compassion for others – including those we love – we must […]

Wind Ridge Press NEW Publication! Author Anthony Quintiliani, a licensed psychologist with more than 35 years professional clinical experience, casts a wide net into the personal, clinical, and societal causes of prolonged human suffering and unhappiness in his book Mindful Happiness. The book’s guided interventions are aimed at helping to relieve depression, anxiety, traumatic reactivity, and […]

Psychoanalytic Gems – Even More D. W. Winnicott has made significant clinical contributions to both building therapeutic alliance and maintaining a positive, helpful focus in psychotherapy. Below I have noted various approaches to use in your therapy. Use of these “gems” requires considerable knowledge and skill by the therapist. Here is the list: Respect the […]

My third posting on self-medication- Comes from the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont. Now we will turn our attention to how people become habituated to self-medication to obtain brief moments of joy and/or to avoid emotional suffering. Recall that self-medication becomes a habit (dopamine released in reward centers of the […]

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy “gems” In my opinion there are about eleven such “gems” in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Use of these interventions in various types of psychotherapy may improve clinical outcomes beyond insight. Although these curative interventions have often been associated with treatment of psychological trauma, object loss, and inner conflict, they may also be useful in the […]

Finding Your Seat with Your Demons and Dragons: Resolutions You may think the creation of the Gestalt-like therapy activity of sitting in different chairs and acting “as if” the you in that personality-chair is the source of your responses is a relatively new psychotherapy intervention. However, some roots of this process may go back as […]

Gurdjieff’s The Fourth Way Meditations: A way of Being and Knowing Although Gurdjieff developed a whole way of being and knowing, including attentional practices, dance/body movements, group processes, and meditations here I will focus only on some of the suggested meditations. In particular, I include the meditations noted by his primary student (J. DeSalzmann, 2011). […]

Practicing Interoceptive Meditations Anthony R. Quintiliani, Ph.D., LADC The mindfulness-based process and intervention of interoception (also called neuroception) has slowly moved from meditation practice into clinical practice, now being part of the recommended MBSR, ACT, and more current CBT-based therapies. The three brief meditations below are presented to expand the use of interoceptive processes in […]

Mindful Solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux Earth Protectors The Standing Rock Sioux earth protectors are fighting earth destruction, environmental degradation, oil profiteering, and corporate greed. Yes, I suppose finding huge reserves of crude helps many people become employed in the Dakotas. This is important. But other earth-wise activity (more solar for example) would be far […]